Thoughts on business, entrepreneurship, and life from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and writer.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Fake Steve To Rednecks, Dell: Suck It, Baby!

Fake Steve continues to just knock the cover off the ball with his posts. Maybe there's something freeing about posting using mask...he really is taking no prisoners.

For example, in his take on the impossibility of a Dell rebound, he explains both of Dell's key innovations (direct sales, lean supply chain) better than I've ever seen them explained before, before pointing out that the Internet and China have rendered them superfluous:

"Bottom line is this: the only innovations worth making are the ones involving product ideas and product design. I mean, Duh. Right? It's pretty obvious. What's amazing to me is how few companies actually seem to realize it. To sustain an edge in any market you must make better products than your competitors, consistently, over and over and over again. Just making the same products as everyone else but taking a little friction out of the system can give you an advantage, but only a temporary one."

As a side note, the one time I met the real Steve in person was at an HBS dinner and awards ceremony in his honor. Someone had the temerity to ask him why people would buy the iPod rather than Dell's cheaper MP3 players (this was before the iPod was launched). Steve's simple, yet devasting reply: "It's called taste."

"And note to the rest of America -- we may not be as sexy as Hollywood or Wall Street, but you know what? We've got a shitload of money, and we know how to organize. We're a powerful bunch of khaki-wearing, gay-marriage-supporting, arugula-eating, Mac-using elitist nerds out here. To all of you racist homophobic non-Californian dumb fucks who find that annoying? Tough shit. We outsmarted you. We out-spent you. And now for the next eight years we're going to be running this country. We're going to give equal rights to gay people, fund stem-cell research, teach evolution, take down the fence on the Mexican border, and make sure abortion stays safe and legal. We're going to pull out of Iraq, shut down Gitmo, and stop torturing people. And yeah. A black dude with a Muslim-sounding name and degrees from Columbia and Harvard is going to be in charge. So sit back down, strap yourself in, and shut the fuck up, crackers."

Somewhere, Bill O'Reilly is turning restlessly in his bed and moaning in subconscious horror.